Paradox and Splinters
by pickledfingers
Summary: The first time John catches eyes with Sherlock, he is young and on his first Watch. John doesn't miss the spark of recognition in those grey eyes.


Beta'd by my best friend and fellow nutter, FrenchFrySplash, who has not been on this site in a while but still has a decent tumblr if you're interested.

I also apologise for the formatting. The use of lines to break between scenes seemed too obtrusive.

* * *

The first time John catches eyes with Sherlock, he is young and on his first Watch. John doesn't miss the spark of recognition in those grey eyes.

... ... ...

The first time Sherlock catches eyes with John, he has just finished a chemistry degree and is sitting in a cafe to celebrate. The older, haggard face isn't one he knows, but he'll accept a nod and a raised glass from the stranger

... ... ...

They'd said that the Academy was the quickest way into the history books, though they were smiling when they sad it. It wasn't really that funny for a joke.

John had been a doctor when he had joined. Sometimes there were casualties, and you needed to fix what had gone wrong, like a person. It was odd, John reflected. An institution that claimed to be advancing humanity had taught him to think of people as things.

Well, that wasn't entirely true. Not-work-people he still thought of as human beings, but the other people he dealt with in his employment were things.

His first mission had been a success, though it had felt like he was missing something. He had gone back the next week to re-visit mission and had spent a day trying to figure out what vital clue he might have missed.

He hadn't wanted this shift, but the officer in charge possessed a terrible sense of humour and had given him the report while saying, "He's the Holmes to your Watson, eh?" With a conspiratorial wink.

John had given him a look which could freeze hydrogen and the officer had decided to continue without the use of humour.

"Do everything your commanding officer tells you to, never interact with a subject, watch, learn, _never_ interact with a subject, never develop any emotional attachments to the subject, and always anticipate everything. If you're good, they might consider you permanently."

... ... ...

They say the problem started when physicists began taking liberties with fundamental laws, but no one could prove that. When history cracks, it's difficult to pinpoint the _when. _All people knew is that they had woken up and suddenly it had always been this way.

When a plate shatters, does it matter where the initial fracture point is?

... ... ...

John is good, _very good_, and commanding officer Lestrade signs him on as soon as they have a spare minute.

His new job takes up weeks at a time, and suddenly John finds he has no time for anything but beautiful grey eyes.

... ... ...

The longer they go on, the more everything splinters. In the early 2030s, the mistakes had been minor and easy to fix, but they had grown in intensity, until the events they were fixing were time line-shifting paradoxes. Suddenly only the best and the brightest could fix them.

... ... ...

When John sees himself, the other self is with Sherlock. Oddly enough, this is not the end of the world, as John had been taught. John simply strolls in to the cafe at Sherlock's heel, gesturing at himself to raise his newspaper and remain unseen. John hopes his older self knows what he's doing and hopes he wont get into trouble until after he's committed the crime. It wold be a shame to be punished for something he'd not yet done.

... ... ...

Trying to retain control over intelligent individuals is a little like nailing jelly to a tree. To compensate for this, the Academy is very militaristic. They hold enough sway for the government to treat them like a military, too. The result is that history is fixed under military law with permission by the government.

They'd known where the splinter was going to happen, they just hadn't know what effect it was going to cause. There was nothing they could do to help; the cut in history was too deep and went back too far. It would cost millions and take years to fix this.

... ... ...

They'd pulled John from the warehouse he'd been following Sherlock through to tell everyone the news.

Dr. John Watson had never been born.

John had started when he'd heard this. There had to be something they could do – Dr. John Watson had to be born so that John could have someone to be named after.

An alternate theory was posted that Dr. John Watson was hiding under a different name, and would change it once he arrived in England. They hoped this was the case, as there was no other way to track him down. There were no known surviving pictures of John Watson. Everything had been burned in a fire a few years after Sherlock Holmes had died, and a selective computer virus (thought to have originated somewhere in the British government) had taken care of any digital copies of the two of them. Photos of Sherlock were now very rare, but photos of the doctor where non-existent.

_Never develop any emotional attachments to the subject._

John had never been good at separating himself from his work, and his heart hurt for the relationship that Sherlock would never know.

... ... ...

They hadn't managed to pin the date that history started coming apart, because once it had happened it had always been happening. But scientists postulated that there must be an alternate psst where nothing happened simply because the magnitude of each splinter was increasing linearly. There must be a point, they reasoned, where nothing was coming apart and then something happened to tear the fabric of space.

They'd managed to get the date within an error margin of ten years, putting the origin at December 1993 to January 2014.

it was a clumsy figure, but when history kept trying to shift around you, you couldn't get much more precise.

... ... ...

John is seated in the cafe when his mark sits in front of him and glares at him from the other side of John's newspaper.

Even if you couldn't see it, when you were glared at by Sherlock Holmes, you knew it.

He lowers his newspaper and orders a scone while the tall man in front of him continues giving a glare that could level mountains.

What John _wants _to do is look the man in the eye an ask, "Yes?" but self-preservation keeps his mouth carefully shut.

_Never interact with the subject._

What he _does_ is spread a liberal amount of jam on the scone and take a very deliberate bite, all while avoiding the eye of the man in front of him.

John knows his subject though, and he gives the man three minutes until the curiosity overwhelms any subtlety the man has.

It only takes one minute.

... ... ...

It happened sometimes, with agents becoming minor parts of the history they were trying to fix. One famous case was of a tired and frazzled agent tapping sir. Isaac Newton on the shoulder to hand him fresh ink and a new piece of chalk after she'd grown fed up with the man's laziness when it came to supplies. He'd ended up cracking a formula that night, the agent had received the disciplinary equivalent of a cuff about the ears, and the incident become a well-known anecdote overnight.

... ... ...

He avoids Sherlock Holmes after that day, choosing only to go to earlier points in the man's life. It takes a few months in John's time line before a medical emergency forces him to the month after what John has nicknamed 'the cafe incident'(c-day for short).

Sherlock has taken a fatal-poison.

Apparently it was a mixture of pride and boredom that got him to swallow the proffered pill, but even so, john can't wrap his head around the stupidity it would take to not consider that both pills are poisoned.

He fixes Sherlock up while he's unconscious, and allows himself to gaze longingly at the man in front of him for a few brief moments. This stupid, stubborn, _brilliant _man in front of him has given John the adventure he's always dreamed of, and he doesn't even know.

_Never develop any emotional attachments to the subject._

Dr. John Watson is supposed to be there to protect Sherlock.

Why isn't he here?

... ... ...

The Holmes family has been running the Academy for years, making certain that history continues running as it should. After all, once history goes, who knows what could happen to the present?

Sherlock Holmes was the one to discover the anomalies in history after all.

It's why he's so important.

... ... ...

John visits twenty years into Sherlock's future after that. It takes him all of five minutes to realize what he's done.

... ... ...

They tried to leave an anomaly alone once, just to see what would happen. They had only made it a half hour into the experiment before a bloody and beaten young man had materialized in front of the controls and died. They found a note in his pocket which had been read by the officer in the room, and then immediately handed to Sheridan Holmes.

The Officer had been asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement, and the experiment was never repeated, despite the lack of data.

... ... ...

He pays a bright young techie to erase him from the system, asks his management for a few months off and then smashes his tracking watch. One bonus about having been in solo missions for most of your career is that few people know what you look like.

It will take them months to realize that he' missing, and even more time to realize where he's gone. By that time, he will have integrated himself with the time line completely.

... ... ...

They've known the origin date for years, the rumours say. Several mathematicians have complained about having their work removed or tampered with before a major breakthrough, and more than one has been forcefully silenced.

Nothing can silence a rumour, though.

Why won't they change it?

... ... ...

He gets a job at a hospital on the outskirts of London's town centre using very carefully forged credentials and spends the first few months making friends, finding a place to live and getting to know London. Finally, he applies for a job at a morgue near the centre of the city, trying to ignore the name over the door.

When he meets Molly Hooper, he plasters a smile over his face and tries not to remember that he knows everything about her from birth to death.

He knows that once he communicates with Sherlock that they'll find him, but he has to talk to this beautiful, brilliant man, so John waits until Sherlock goes out on a chase.

One reason why John was such a good agent was that no one else had been able to keep up with Sherlock on chases, so they'd left those parts unwatched.

John apprehends the subject for Sherlock, and waits until Sherlock catches up with them.

There is shock on Sherlock's face when he recognizes John from the cafe. For John it had been over a year, but for Sherlock it had been only a couple of days.

Sherlock is speechless and John knows that his appearance has been registered by the genius in front of him. He wonders how he must look to Sherlock. The past year has left its mark on John.

Sherlock reaches forwards to touch John's face.

"Not makeup, it's real. When I met you in the cafe I asked why you were following me, but it's more complex than that, isn't it?"

Sherlock lets the question hang in the air and then asked John if he wants a flatmate.

John can't keep the smile off of his face, and accepts.

He'll move in in a month.

... ... ...

What most people don't realize is that they have attempted to stop the anomalies several times.

Each time it failed and the size of the splinter increased.

Eventually the Academy erased each attempt from history and decided to tell people that they couldn't pinpoint the date. It was better to do that than to give people hope, after all.

The first attempt, they had erased someone from history. After all, it was a man driven by grief who had started the domino effect, so what better to do than remove the subject of grief? If the man was driven mad by a loved one, what better to do than make certain that the two of them never met?

They hadn't realized how wrong they were.

... ... ...

John left notes for Sherlock to find, and Sherlock wrote back occasionally. The man had a sense of humour, even if a bit morbid, and John enjoyed finding the notes around the morgue. He was glad that Sherlock hadn't questioned John's unwillingness to meet face to face in public.

John still follows Sherlock on cases, though. Sherlock hasn't realized it yet, which is probably for the best. John only curses his not being next to Sherlock during the case where Sherlock poisons himself. Out of anger, John shoots the cab driver and waits for himself to show up and give medical attention to Sherlock.

There is no regret for shooting the man, which surprises John. He'd fully resigned himself to justifying the deed after it was done, but there is no need for anything of the sort.

All that is left in the wake of the murder is the knowledge that he has fallen for his flatmate.

Damn.

... ... ...

With no one to teach the man to be human, he became a force to be reckoned with, completely disregarding his safety.

This time, the man creates the anomalies out of boredom.

The second attempt at stopping the anomalies involves shooting the man.

During that time line, the anomalies were created by a vicious criminal madman who was still alive because he hadn't shot himself on a rooftop. On top of the anomalies, the criminal madman grew even more powerful and eventually managed to topple and takeover governments. The world fell to chaos.

When they tried to stop the third time line by killing the criminal, the American government had been the one to create the anomalies in an unwise attempt to create a weapon.

Nobody had wanted to see what would happen if they tried to stop the American government. Nobody wanted to take their chances with the exponential escalation.

They sent in a medical team to heal Sherlock and started the fifth time line

They thought that was that, that everything could be left to go back to the original time line, but no one had realized how convoluted the original time line was.

... ... ...

He moves in a week after the cab driver case. Sherlock is just as difficult to live with as John expected, and John is as forthcoming about his past as Sherlock expected. It's an odd arrangement, but it's one that works and within two weeks John wouldn't replace it for anything. He's happy, happier than he's ever been and nothing anyone says (least of all Donovan and her small following) could ever make him reconsider what he's done with his life.

John Watson doesn't exist. This discovery sends shock waves through the Academy. They frantically search through mission after mission to find what they've done wrong and fix the issue, but nothing turns up.

Eventually it is decided that the reason that John Watson doesn't exist is because he's never born.

A year after John has been living with Sherlock, John walks in to find a member of the academy waiting on his sofa.

Admittedly the visit is long overdue, so John really isn't surprised.

What does surprise John however is that the man waiting for him is Sheridan Holmes.

He raises a glass of whiskey at John (I was hoping to save that bottle for later, John thinks) and motions for John to join him.

"John," the man begins. "You probably don't know me as well as I know you. I grew up in the first time line you see, and you were always my favourite uncle growing up."

This pulls John up short (though something about the way the man says 'uncle' seems off, almost..._incorrect_) and he stares at the man in front of him who must be at least sixty.

He pulls his thoughts to order and voices his first question.

"First time line, sir?"

... ... ...

A fair amount of research is done into the matter. After all, the indirect cause of the anomalies is important.

A thorough analysis of every writing made about the two men is done and it is eventually concluded that in a different time line without the anomalies there was a military time travel program which resulted in John Watson getting stranded.

John Watson probably never realized why he had such an easy time getting into the Academy.

... ... ...

Sheridan Holmes walks out of the house and disappears into the street. John stares at his hands.

Well, that explains why he hasn't been forcefully corrected yet.

Sherlock comes out from his room and looks at John strangely

"I suppose you heard that?" John asks him.

Sherlock nods and sits down, looking at John oddly.

"That's what you've been hiding?"

John nods, looking resolutely at a spot two feet to the left of Sherlock.

Sherlock doesn't say anything for a while and John gets a bit worried.

When the silence is too much and John has to look at Sherlock face because he has to _know,_ Sherlock is still staring at john with an intense expression that makes john's ears heat up.

"I don't mind that you didn't tell me, you know."

"I wanted to!" John burst out. "I did! But I was scared they might court martial me, or I'd be taken away and never get the chance to tell you anything."

Sherlock gave him a sharp look. "You didn't think that I'd want to know why you disappeared overnight?"

John looked that the spot left of Sherlock again.

"That wasn't why I didn't want to tell you."

"Then why?" Sherlock sounds _hurt_, but John daren't look at his face in case he loses his nerve.

"Because I thought that if I told you about this that you'd see what else I was hiding. That you'd see that I-" his throat dries and John swallows to keep going. "That I love you."

He closes his eyes and continues. "And then if I was taken away it might not hurt so much."

When Sherlock next speaks it is but a couple of inches from John's nose.

"You _idiot._"

... ... ...

They were shrinking. It was a little known fact that they didn't want to release to the public until it had been confirmed, but the splinters in time were shrinking.

... ... ...

John rests his head on Sherlock's shoulder, heart still pounding, limbs slick and heavy from exertion.

"Sherlock," he whispers into the darkness. "Sherlock, I need you to promise me something."

"Anything."

"When I die, I need you to promise to leave me. Don't try to fix it."

Sherlock turns suddenly to face John, his stare pinning John in place.

"Why?" And John thinks, how many people can say that the one they love would let the world fall apart and burn just to let them live.

"Because I am one man, and this world means so much to me. I've put work into it, you know." He tries to lighten the tense atmosphere with a joke. It doesn't work.

Sherlock doesn't move.

"Please," John whispers, a quiet word that is all emotion and barely sound.

Sherlock nods.

... ... ...

Until one day, they stopped.

Sheridan Holmes looked at the photograph on his desk and smiled at his dads' picture. It was the last one they'd ever taken together before John had died. It is not a happy picture, but it is the best Sheridan has.

Sherlock is glaring at someone off-camera, john is stood partially in front of Sherlock, head tilted back to look at the taller man. Their hands are clasped together, and the adoration in john's eyes is apparent to any observer.

... ... ...

"Alright, lads!" Captain John Watson saluted the men behind the large and complicated control panel. A couple of the younger men on guard had become rather dear to the captain, and they were looking rather nervous at the prospect of seeing their captain disappear. He smiled warmly to put them at ease.

He didn't know where he was going. Between his intelligence, his medical degree and his lack of family he was the perfect man for the job. The military was not usually this apathetic towards sending their doctors into potential deadly situations, but this was a special case. This was a multi-million dollar program, and if the subject could heal himself should anything happen, then there was a greater chance that he might survive to bring them the data they wanted.

There was a hum as they started the machine. In about two minutes more when the machine was fully warmed up you wouldn't be able to hear anything over it's roar, so he turned to the men behind the glass.

"If this fails to pull me back, know that I don't regret anything, lads. I'll see you later!"

The hum was loud enough now that John Watson had to shout, so he settled on waving at the two men.

There was a bright flash, a sudden, exponential increase in noise, and Captain John Watson disappeared.


End file.
